In certain designs of cathode plates for field emission devices, e.g., field emission displays, the layout of the cathode surface may require the emitter lines to be bordered by or in close proximity to electrically insolating dielectric surfaces. During field emission, these neighboring dielectric surfaces are bombarded by high energy electrons with shallow angle of incidence. As a result, secondary electron emission may occur from the dielectric surface leaving behind static positive charges. These positively charged surfaces, being only a short distance away from the emitter, will exert a large positive electric field on the emitter resulting in even stronger emission in the direction of the dielectric surfaces. This effect is therefore self-enhancing and will dominate any gate or anode control. Since the static charge continues to build with time, uncontrollable charging induced emission can occur even at very low continuous anode voltage. This problem severely limits the anode voltage. One solution would be to change the cathode layout that may minimize this charging effect. A preferred solution is to develop a single or multilayer dielectric system that does not charge up as a result of having a low secondary emission characteristic or effectively dissipating the charge as the electric field increases.